COLUMBIA – The S.C. House has temporarily pulled the plug on the $37 million that SCANA gets each month for two nuclear reactors that will never generate the first kilowatt of electricity.
On Wednesday, the House voted 119-1 to drop the $27 per month fee that SCE&G electric customers are paying for a now-abandoned reactor project at V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in Fairfield County. SCANA is the parent company of SCE&G.
Rep. Brandon Newton (R-Lancaster) said it was time for the legislature to take a stand on behalf of beleaguered ratepayers.

Trey Gowdy, who led the Benghazi investigation in the U.S. House that uncovered Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, is getting out of politics.
“There is a time to come and a time to go,” Gowdy wrote Wednesday on Twitter, announcing that he would not run for reelection this year. “This is the right time, for me, to leave politics and return to the justice system.”

An interaction between a sheriff’s deputy and former school board member James Brooks outside an Indian Land restaurant Jan. 18 led to drug charges against Brooks’ girlfriend, Laura Lee McManus.
The incident at Bojangles, 8327 Collins Road, happened two days after Brooks’ release from jail on similar charges and nearly a year to the day after his drug arrest with McManus at the nearby Gate Station.

Buford Elementary fourth grader Bryce Bridges, drafted into the county spelling bee when his school’s winner got sick, won the championship Thursday and beamed at his good fortune.
“Rupture” was the word that’s taking Bryce to the regional spelling bee in Charlotte on Feb. 19.
Bryce, his school’s alternate, found out Monday that he would be competing in the bee in place of the school’s winner, who was sick.
“I was nervous,” he said after the victory. “I just don’t know how I won.”